Sell Your Gold – Inflation is Serious Business

The other day a reader wrote a comment asking if it would be smarter to invest gold in the first few days into your artisan. It might be, but let’s take a realistic look at what’s going to happen to the real-money value of gold in the first week of Diablo 3.

Based on my experience playing World of Warcraft through many patches and expansions (all of them). I’m going to make a bold estimate. That estimate is that gold’s value will drop 95% within the first 2 weeks. I’m thinking along the lines of 20% per day, more in the beginning and less near the end of the second week. Given that, let’s assume that gold is worth $10.00/1k on day (it won’t be, I’m just using this as an example). If it drops by 95% in the first 2 weeks that means the same 1k gold will be worth $0.50 on day 14.

If you have 100,000 gold on day 1, should you sell it or should you invest it in something else? If you sell it, you pocket $850 after transaction fees. If you hold that real-money until day 14 and rebuy gold with it, you’ll be able to buy 1,700,000 gold. If you invest it into an artisan, you might be able to make a good amount of gold or even get some gear that helps you level faster or farm better. But will it earn you the 1.6 million gold that you would have made by moving your funds to real-money on day 1? I don’t think so.

It’s true that the $1/1k gold estimate is high and it might be the case that my 20% daily inflation estimate is high too, but there’s no doubt that there will be a significant amount of inflation in the first 2 weeks. Why not sell your gold right away and rebuy when things calm down? Why not focus on leveling and be one of the first to level 60 and one of the first with a billion gold after you buy gold back?

Gear is still important

Don’t completely ignore your gear. You might have to spend a lot of gold initially to progress through challenging content. In this case, it’s realistic to think that the gear you buy early will help you earn gold back later. Do whatever you can to be the first to level 60 and be one of the first to have access to challenging and rewarding Inferno content.

Artisans suck anyways

What are you going to do with your artisan in the first week? Are you going to craft pre-level 60 gear and sell it on the auction house? If that’s your strategy you better have a lot of crafting materials (expensive) and hope that you get some lucky crafts. I’m sure people will make money doing this, but I would much rather power level my artisan during the third week of the game when I’m level 60 and the gold is easier to get than doing it in the first week when gold is a scarce commodity.

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.